He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into the abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.
---Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

More on the Middle East War

Just because I think drive-by comment posts are so much fun, I thought I'd say a few words about the latest Middle East war.

1) The United States is obviously interested in increasing the numbers of "civilian" casualties on the Lebanese side. Israel's primary objective is to destroy Hezbollah's missiles and launchers. I know Bush just pulls stuff out of his posterior, but the rationale for one week as opposed to one day, or two weeks or six months or one year, would probably keep late-night hosts in material for several weeks. And once again, why is the pressure being put on Israel? Why not a one-week deadline on Lebanon to get control of its own territory, or we will green-light Israel to do it for them?

2) Once again, why is Israel under international pressure and not Syria or Iran? Why are they given some sort of get-out-of-jail-free card? I don't get this. Of course, I don't get a lot of things.

3) Hezbollah wants a ground war. Israel, being very wise in my opinion, is steadfastly refusing to give them one (in spite of the alarmist headline on the linked article). Make no mistake, Israel would eventually prevail assuming they were allowed to do what was necessary, which would likely be a scorched-earth policy. But right now, they have the limited and very defensible objective of eliminating the missiles that the blue-helmeted pussies were supposed to keep out of south Lebanon in the first place. Occupying Lebanese territory is diplomatically tricky, even while being perfectly logical.